Origami Cranes
by jasi jan
Summary: He scowled at her sidelong glare. She pulled her toppled cinnamon locks into a quickly fashioned bun and turned from him. "Come on." She lead the way down the snow-covered coast, and all he could do was watch her hair slowly trickle apart with every step she made. Compliancy up to Malfoy Manor, HPDH.
1. clever, swift, and able

This is an updated version of this chapter - please review! It really does help the story move along.

~J

**March 24 1998 6:08pm**

The moment Bellatrix Lestrange's staccato, wild laugh broke from her lips, Draco Malfoy found himself in the most unimaginable situation: standing over Hermione Granger as his aunt's fingers played with a long tortoise-shell knife. "Do her in, Draco," she said; he didn't look at her, "the muggle way." He looked at her.

She was bloody mad.

Hermione whimpered beneath him, weeping silently, struggling, but unable to move. Her eyes pleaded with Draco. Bellatrix handed him the knife. "Take it!"

He didn't dare contemplate; after a moment, he did. But hesitation was always Draco's forte. And he's already accepted his cowardice tendencies. Yes, Draco wanted all but nothing to do but glide the sky with the new Firebolt 4000. It was a shame really, to be swept - no embedded - into such dark times, dark places, dark families. His dark mark. His mother put a hand to her mouth.

Bellatrix's sing-song voice broke his contemplation and rung the room like broken strings, and she circled him like a bat. "Draco, show me what you couldn't do," and here she raised herself in a hushed voice, "_to Albus_."

Narcissa stepped forward. "Please."

It was inevitable that he would be punished for his failure. His inability. These moments are the moments he recalls his unexploited byline: "_clever, swift, and able._" Clever, swift, and _able_. That was his magic. His essence. His wand - a mantra he's known since his first steps into Ollivander's wandshop those many years ago. "A pliant wand for a pliant boy," Mr. Ollivander told him, "able to bend without breaking."

But why couldn't he bend? He felt like breaking for sure, and he couldn't even bend. He's never bent in his life. He furrowed his eyebrows at Hermione, writhing beneath him, but fierce as ever. _Granger._

She's the type that bends without breaking.

He isn't any type. Not once has he lived up to his magical creed. He is what his father condemns: "A cowardice failure of a son," where the thought alone of stabbing the infamous Hermione Granger created a sharp pang of nausea at the back of his throat, and where the image of her blood spilling out beneath him - the image of lifelessness, limpness, empty eyes - quivered every delicate fiber of his nature. He side-glanced his mother, horrified and agape, his father, stern and serious, and then back to Hermione.

Bellatrix tugged at him. "No need to hesitate, Draco." She swiftly grabbed his trembling hands, steadied it, and dragged him down to his knees. "Right through her heart, Draco. Yes, right here. It will be quick."

Hermione cried, hot streaming tears sparking in her eyes like the first hint of fire. Draco felt the world shift beneath him. What good would it do - doing in the little bookworm like this? Couldn't he say something like: "We need her alive for Potter? We need her alive for bait? We need her alive for information?" All cleverness must have dried his tongue months ago, because such words never left his mouth. His knife feathered her collarbone - just for a second - and she gasped, panting and feverish under his tow. She began to cry uncontrollably. _Please don't._

He was a pathetic.

Such one, that in one backward glance to his mother, the mouthed _'apparate' _brought a leap in his heart. To disappear. To run away. The one item he was good actually good at.

He looked at Hermione with newfound determinism. He turned sharply, resolute, and nodded his head at his aunt.

Gleefully, she let go, bounced upward, and beamed.

In the moment of release, and without a single mark of hesitation, though it did pass through him - he grabbed Hermione's arm and spun the world beneath his heels. The last of glimmer of Bellatrix he knew would not be the last.

**March 24 1998.**** 6:22pm**

He first tried to unbind her. She was so frail beneath him. Her brown eyes stared up at him as he muttered spells, calming enchantments, magic like thin blue wreaths that curled around her in fanciful whorls - it seeped in her like Christmas. Her breathing subsided to a soft hum and she closed her eyes. After he was finished, he leaned against a tree and closed his eyes too.

**March 25 1998.**** 12:40am**

In public, he was cold, aloof, and somewhat pompous. Even as a boy, he stood casually in pictures, and with his right hand royally, even Napoleonically, tucked into his pocket, the impatient and spoiled expression he wore outshines even his mother, whose sanguine beauty fell short to the little boy with piercing eyes, hair like platinum, and a pose made for the divine, a Michelangelo, a lavished prince. Such ego entailed, and he was well aware of his hubris, his Achilles heel, his Narcissus, the touch of reality he sometimes lost. Such a dark reality.

Inside, he felt empty.

He awoke from his thoughts to the sound of explosions. He saw Hermione's sleeping figure across from him. She didn't even stir. Moss and dead leaves surrounded her and she seemed unaware of reality, deep in sleep, and he wished he could do just the same.

It would be time to go.

**March 25 1998.**** 4:56am**

They ran for what it seemed like hours from black hooded figures, spinning dark magic from their wands. Hermione was hit, once, twice, and barely missed a _crucio_ curse. She found a ditch and pulled Draco inside. Magic flared above them, and he knew they had seconds if not less. A groan escaped her chapped lips, as she held her arm, and Draco dropped beside her. Hermione suddenly became determined, breathing heavily, and quickly flashed him a cool set of eyes. "We are going to apparate. This time, no one will know."

He nodded and she grabbed him, pulling him tightly against her. He closed his eyes as his world unfurled-he could no longer feel the damp grass beneath him, or smell the thick musk of evergreen. When he opened his eyes to a blinding white-_snow?_-drifting above him like glossy sheets, he realized they were no longer near London.

"Where are we?" he rasped, watching the fog from his mouth catch the wind.

The winter above them outmatched the world before, where the crisp air ran low beneath them, and where the snow speckled the skyline like stars.

"We are near the ocean," she said, finding her feet. "The Atlantic."

She lend out her hand to him but he didn't take it.

**March 25 1998.**** 6.55am**

Seaweed appeared in bloom along the coast; the light snow weaved through the surrounding mountains, creating a dense fog adrift the Atlantic shore. Ice, sculpted by waves and spray, encrusted the pier where they stopped to rest, where the fogs of their breath stroked the stray rays of morning sunlight through the dingy-lidded wooden pier that shadowed their faces.

Draco couldn't take it anymore. He was freezing, tired, and sore. Even casting heating enchantments on himself every couple ten minutes left him freezing, tired, and sore. And in all, he'd refused to ponder his undoing - yet it did creep the corners of his mind - and he refused to feel fear, guilt, and any other conflicting, complicated emotions. Like being alone, lost - _near the Atlantic?_ - all being next to Granger. _Bloody Granger. _

"Bloody hell," Draco grunted; his voice was hoarse and tethered. "Where the hell are we? Where are we going?"

Hermione, ahead of him, hiccuped, and coughed deep in her throat the moment his voice found her. She turned to look at him and he realized it was the first time he _actually_ looked at her all evening, all morning. Dried blood crisped the edges of her lashes and streaked to her chin. She wiped her runny nose and stood a while examining her reddened, possibly near-frozen, hands. Her hazelnut curls tumbled out of its loose bun and covered her slight face. She was silent. He presumed she had been crying and felt immediately inadequate.

"Granger." His voice resonated under the pier and seemed to float to her. She did not look at him.

"We can rest here for a few minutes," she suddenly said, turning away, and moving to the other side of the pier.

Sunlit snow fluttered in the breeze, as he watched her sit on a dislodged log, head in her hands, the glitters of constellations prickling her tattered clothes. He muttered under his breath a curse or two, and walked out from the pier to give her space, all the while clearing his tethered throat, coughing, and squinting to look at the brightening sky. Gathering clouds, like raveled skeins of white silk, drifted across the hollow turquoise of the horizon. It reminded him of childhood - just for a moment - a sky that looked very much the same (or was it the salty sea air?) of Christmas spent at family's beach house the north of France. It was silly, trifling thought, but it suprisingly warmed his bones, the places where it ached. It was the Christmas where he received his first broom. He'd sailed it across the sky till his fingers could no longer feel the hawthorn wood.

He glanced at Hermione's small figure, now staring at the horizon, lost in thought. He briefly wondered what she was thinking about.

**March 25 1998.**** 7:24am**

He was listening, quite peacefully, to the ocean rasping in under the floes when she finally came to him, faint, with tear-stained cheeks daubed with blood.

"It's my grandfather's old beach house," she said, eyes upon him but not looking at him, "We'll be be safe there for now. It should be another thirty minutes."

"Bollocks Granger. You couldn't apparate us any closer to the bloody house."

She ignored him willfully, and he noticed her run down face seeping in the white-washed glow, her pallid features growing grave, exasperated. She looked at him. _Please._

He scowled at her sidelong glare. She pulled her toppled cinnamon locks into a quickly fashioned bun and turned from him. "Come on." She lead the way down the snow-covered coast, and all he could do was watch her hair slowly trickle apart with every step she made.


	2. old ghosts

This is an updated version of this chapter - it has much added. Please again review! It is helpful! Let me know if you have any questions too!

~J

**March 25 1998.**** 8:04am**

They reached the beach house by eight. Hermione immediately started a fire in the living room and Draco gathered himself, casting charms and enchantments upon himself. He was so cold and dirty. He saw a dusted mirror in hallway to the living room, where Hermione beckoned him in, and he took a moment to wipe it clean with his sleeve. There was a worn, opaque but serious reflection. From another world altogether - the earth gleamed upon his face: frostbit, muddied, sleeted, and pale. His hair, ruffled, was shade not of his fancy, yellow-brown. His eyes rimmed and dark. This moment he would have transfigured a comb - anything - to put everything back into place. Where it should be. But he didn't - he did nothing but stare.

Once, Draco believed that consistency, a sense of invariability, begot, first, a disposition of discipline, and ultimately an aptitude for power. He once looked up to his father.

When he found his way into the living room, a rather ornate room drenched in a watery shimmer, he saw Hermione closing the curtain to the large window facing the ocean. "We'll be safe here for a little while," she said and she made her way to turn on the lights. The large wrought-iron chandelier, its handcrafted class tulips, lit the room in a soft glow. "It's an old house," she said lightly, looking around. Possibly for old ghosts.

"I think we should stay here until…" she trailed. "Until we figure all this out."

Draco nodded to her - _brilliant plan_ - and strolled to the cobwebbed armchair to rest his eyes. Hermione then announced that she would be indisposed in the bath, and asked him to call her if he should need anything.

He fell asleep as soon as his eyes shut.

**March 25 1998.**** 2:43pm**

When Draco awoke a few hours later, next a warm fire and a quiet Hermione, her damp curls draping her shoulder, he decided to ask her for water. She offered him tea. She herself cradled a cold cup of amber, and she looked at him with an expression he couldn't discern. Almost as if she was asking him: _"Why did you do it?" _

He shook that feeling off, Granger's strange looks, and drank the Earl Gray, unquestionably thirsty. No, he wanted to talk about other things.

"So we wait here," he stated flatly. "Wait until they find us."

She sighed, her face turning away from him and casting a long look of intent at the fire.

"And Potter is presumed dead," he added.

"No," she whispered. "Harry isn't dead. He can't be dead," she said, not to Draco, but to herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs.

"And why would you believe that?" Draco sneered, but not entirely intentionally. "Make yourself believe what you want you daft witch" - unintentionally spiteful - "it's all over."

She had turned sharply toward him, her eyes aflame, reflecting all the bits and pieces of her fragmented Gryffindor-bloody-heart. "And you're so entirely sure of yourself," she countered, "You-"

"Don't strain yourself-"

"Insufferable-"

"Potter is locked-"

"Harry is one of the most powerful-"

"Without a wand I may add-"

"We won't back down without a-"

"Only a matter of time before-"

"Don't you dare-"

"The Dark Lord-"

Something broke, literally broke (perhaps a teacup), and Hermione was up on her knees and into his face - his personal damn space - in a matter of seconds. "Don't stay his name!" she almost screamed, a shrill that told him that she couldn't take anymore darkness for that day, her finger pointed at him, shaking, eyes burning. It was then Draco noticed the scar, relatively fresh, pink and all, scratched - no rather etched - upon her forearm. _Didn't she know how to heal? _

_Mudblood. _

"Don't say his name," she said again; a small, faint voice.

He didn't. He bloody fucking didn't.

**March 25 1998.**** 6:23pm**

There was a photo of a young girl, sitting on a bench in a garden, on the mantle. The young girl looked unhappy.

He stood up to examine it, first, by blowing off the dust.

She suddenly found her way next to him. "That," she moved closer to look at it, "was a long time ago."

Draco would later learn that it was a picture taken when she was about six. She sat not in a garden but in a cemetery awaiting her grandmother's burial. She told him, if he was not mistaken, that on the ride home she had sunk into the sweetest sleep she had ever known. Draco imagined it to be like a long draft of cool water - deep and fragrant, washed with ivory light - the kind of sleep, he believed, that came only in the aftermath of many tears. Draco had once had such a sleep.

**March 25 1998.**** 6:49pm**

The making of dinner possessed all of Draco's attention. What was all this muggle madness? After shuffling through the pantry for a quarter longer than it should, where Hermione would mumble, "expired; expired…_honestly_," and where piles of cans and cardboard boxes encircled her like a barricade, dinner was at last discovered: canned chicken noodle soup. She almost beamed at him - no it was the light, she was still frowning, upset and pissy as ever - all the while Draco shook the fleeting desire to kick the down her makeshift barricade - something he used to do to sandcastles that were better decorated than his. Something about ruins being beautiful, his mother would mock him. "Always breaking things."

Hermione went along with flickering on fires without wands, heating water, and stirring contents. As she waited, she opened old books upon the counter and flicked through them. He'd do exactly the same. He reached for a small lamp on an small inlaid table and pulled it on. Its amber light buzzed and the bulb beneath it swayed; he found a book on moral philosophy.

Just as Draco was about to put the book back down -_ utter rubbish_ - Hermione glanced at him.

"That book," she said slowly, "do you find it….interesting?"

She didn't talk much, which was nice because Draco didn't like talking, but this was an attempt, a sored one, to have an actual conversation. A conversation with _Granger _about morals. Draco would pass. He didn't so much even look at her. He did indeed find the book interesting. An interesting load of rubbish. Rubbish that culture coexisted "equally" - Draco didn't believe that cultures of people were separate but equal. No, that would not be right.

He shut the book and glared at her. "What's more interesting is when dinner will be ready."

She slammed her book shut and laid a hand on her hip."It's ready when it's ready," she fumed. Then - "Why don't you come here and help Malfoy," she motioned at the small wooden kitchen table, "like set the table."

_"_You're part female Granger, aren't you-"

"You're such a prat, Malfoy-"

"Or was it part elf-"

"You probably haven't done one-"

"Oh, I just can't remember. Why don't-"

"It's a shame really-"

"Give a bloke a headache-"

"Never ask a Malfoy to get his hands-"

"Would you stop your bitching, Granger-"

"A little dirty-"

Draco thought it'd go on for eons. He grabbed his wand and promptly cast a silencing charm on the little witch. The moment she realized the spell she snatched a book from the counter and threw it at him with, to much of Draco's surprise, quite force. It missed.

**March 25 1998.**** 7:11pm**

When the soup was finally warmed, Hermione (silent but deadly) gathered some of the soup into two bowls and sat them down on the kitchen table. She stared at him with such hate, Draco thought he'd faint.

No, that would not do.

Draco took his bowl and spoon and brought it to the farthest corner of the living room. Once he was alone, he undid the silencing spell, to where a simple flick of his wand caused Hermione to shoot him a look from across the room, a look that unmistakably changed from confusion to recognition to hate, and to where she didn't say a word but Draco presumed that death glares were multitudes louder than words.

**March 25 1998.**** 11:20pm**

"You can sleep in the guest room." It was Hermione; she had not left the kitchen and he could hear her washing the dishes. He looked around and saw that his bowl was gone.

He'd must have dozed off. Over an hour earlier, he recalled, he'd been in deep thought pondering his decision, looking out the window, watching the waves crash upon the shore. They were such thoughts like: _Should I have killed her? Injured her? Fainted? _

_What if. _

He reminded himself that he'd always been a coward.A meaningless Malfoy that failed to live up to his father's legacy, most importantly, his expectations; Draco never felt a sense of security following his father's footsteps; they were to large to fill, to deep to see, to hollow to feel. It was like following footprints between the snow.

He didn't look at Hermione, keeping his eyes closed, but imagined her furrowing her brows over the sink, washing bowls and teacups in soup water. He couldn't let his thoughts astray; and he wanted to keep himself in tune with reality. His surroundings. He imagined her hands rubbing the porcelain. _Where is mother?_ He imagined her shoes, squeaking on the floor as she moved. _Where is father?_ He imagined her hand, pruny and wet, pushing aside the hair that sticks to her flushed cheeks. _Where is Bellatrix? The Dark Lord?_

These thoughts felt as heavy as the earth - a pain in his heart - he instead wanted those thoughts that felt like air, where he couldn't capture it, nor less follow it. He wanted it to fill him like a breeze. No, he wanted to know what will become of him. The thoughts grew suddenly willful, spiteful, and he tossed it in the air and transformed it - _Granger_ - let it escape and recapture it - _This bloody house -_ he made it iridescent with a fumbling fear, and wined it with paradox - _What am I to do?_

"Well," Hermione said, suddenly standing before him. "Are you coming?"


End file.
